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The Romans were never successful in cracking Persian intransigence—there has been no conqueror from the West in Persia for 2,500 years. Alexander got there, and then he died mysteriously in Babylon—always a puzzle. What is important here is that the tangle with the Persian Empire is not finished. The word “ceasefire” itself tells you there is more to come. Negotiations between the Empire and the Persian leadership—called Iranian these days—were not successful in finding a way to work together.

And so, right now, there are more threats from the Emperor and more remarks of confidence from Tehran. There is a waiting going on in America and the Western trading markets for what comes next. We are aware that the price of a barrel of oil is going to stay elevated for some time, not only because of the conflict but because the supply chain is getting backed up and won’t easily resolve itself.

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We know we're in a crisis mode because we're all relaxed. And that's the best condition when you're in a crisis mode. I present what we have for information from the Emperor.

Within these last hours, the Emperor has issued a threat to the IRGC, which is the state within a state now in charge of the defense of and maintaining the credibility of the Islamic Republic of Iran:

Tuesday will be Power Plant Day and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the _____ Strait, you crazy _____, or you'll be living in ____- JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP

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We have concerns about the American empire, which at this point has reached a critical turning point.

Not the “end of everything” critical, but critical in that it can go badly, or it can go very badly. I am reminded of the choices that were poorly decided at the end of the Vietnam War.

Those decisions led to the catastrophe of the Killing Fields of Cambodia and a breakdown of confidence in the states of Southeast Asia these many decades later. It is not always obvious to see, but millions of people lost their lives because of poor decisions made by the American empire at the end of the Vietnam conflict.

Could that happen again? It is unknown. That is why Germanicus is here.

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We started last week with things going awry with the American Republic in the 21st century. So, gentlemen, find a seat, please.

Germanicus was able to join me for a few moments two days ago. Speaking to the audience in the 21st century, he started down the path of understanding how confusing the events out of the Middle East are right now.

For example, I’m told reliably that there are 3,200 ships of all kinds trapped in the Gulf. Can’t get out. That isn’t just all tankers, that’s freighters, container ships. There’s so many ships trapped. There’s a shortage of containers worldwide, and the prices have gone up fourfold in the last week. What’s trapped there is—it’s hard to account for the scale of it, but that’s how supply chains work.

That’s one little detail of this conflict in which escalation is underway, and Germanicus started to explain the escalation on Friday. It’s the same direction, but more so 48 hours later. Because what was a rumor of war a week ago—that is the Marines being asked to take over Kharg Island—is now in the headlines out of London. The whole story is the enemy gets a vote, and the enemy is voting.

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Gentlemen, we have the update. It’s not profoundly different from Friday: more and more death and destruction raining down from the sky.

We are, however, going to address this in terms of our learning from the first century A.D. and our education about the first century B.C.E.—the Roman civil wars of Sulla, Caesar, and Octavian.

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We are currently witnessing, in real time, global reports on the escalating crisis facing America and its European allies: the so-called “Iran War.” In the United Kingdom, the press—most notably the London Telegraph—has already begun branding this conflict “Trump’s War.”

This is a war launched, we believe, out of a preemptive fear of Iranian aggression against the United States. I hesitate only because the justifications for this conflict remain varied and fluid. Historically, it is rare to speak of America starting a war. The traditional American narrative is one of response and reaction—a nation that defends itself, pushes back, and brings wars to a close.

To see the U.S. take the initiative in starting a conflict is highly unusual. While there have been smaller instances of this in the past, a mobilization of this magnitude is unprecedented. The true origins and motivations of this shift will likely be debated by historians for the next hundred years.

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We’ve gathered by the Thames because of the alarming news from the 21st century. Our centurions are crashing in; they’ve heard the news as well.

The United States—our inheritors—are at war with Persia. That gets the attention of Romans. Always has, always will.

Germanicus and I will try to avoid the irony. That’s about us, but it’s probably impossible. We’ll try and be as lighthearted as you know us to be.

War with Persia, though, makes us nervous.

A second glass of wine, please.

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In the 21st century, the Americans surround Iran with a fleet and warplanes that can render the rubble, rubble for days, for weeks. Gathering of eagles plus all of the guns and all of the men necessary to reduce Iran.

We know it’s Persia. We know that country has been fighting for 2500 years—Rome, Greece. Every manner of empire between Rome and Greece has taken a shot at Persia. It’s still standing. We know this.

So I present to you: Sparta versus Argos. Argos is going to claim it wins because it has two left. Sparta is going to claim it wins because it was the only one on the battlefield. And both sides will then go to war and reduce each other, is the fairy tale.

How do you see the Persians versus the Americans in the 21st century?

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FDR pulled off a switch-a-roo in front of the American people, and it didn’t bother anybody that he spent all of the prep for the war pounding Europe. And then suddenly it’s the Pacific that attacks to us.

It was a two-front war right away. It occurs to me that this is a useful analogy to the situation that the US has faced for some years a two-front war. Is it the People’s Republic of China that is threatening our freedom and the freedom of our allies in the Pacific? Or is it Russia, the Russian Federation and its allies threatening our allies and us in Europe?

And we fight this war first, or that war first? How do we make a choice? Have we got enough money? And the American people understand that the choice is ready-made for you: I give you a two-front war.

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Germanicus is here at our famous wine bar, where the centurions gathered early. I think they started drinking before us, but they count on us to show up to entertain them, and so here we are.

We begin with Germanicus’s essay on the symbology of the Ukrainian War.

It draws on the genius of the Iliad, which you all remember dominated the romantic lives of Rome and Greece, the Etruscans before them, and the Carthaginians contemporaneously.

The Iliad—that story of the siege of Troy and its end, with people throwing their children into flames—dominated their imaginations.

It was television; it was Hollywood; it was the internet all wrapped up into one episode after another.

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“Bridges and Tunnels of Ukrainian Oblasts: Sacred Symbols in the Story of a Failing War” in The Brown Journal of World Affairs by .

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I welcome Germanicus, my colleague.

It is helpful to take what I read during the week (way too much, and I’ve been reading the 21st century again, very confusing) and then submit it to Germanicus, who has a common sense approach to these matters, such as when he spoke on the Russia-NATO conflict in the 21st century.

I’ve got a whopper for us this week, Jim. It’s overwhelming. What I’ve discovered is a new book from a young professor at Columbia University, historian Paul Thomas Chamberlin, Scorched Earth. It’s 800 pages long, twenty chapters. I’m on the fifth chapter, and I’m already gobsmacked.

The day before I started this book, I had the great pleasure of talking to Sir Max Hastings, the British historian of the Second World War, and we spent two hours talking about Sword Beach.

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Germanicus is going to take us by the hand and lead us to a man named Bonaparte from Corsica, who (by the time we speak) has made a decision that he needs money. There’s been trouble in the sugar plantations of Haiti, and therefore he needs cash right now.

He’s up against the whole world. That was that was his favorite entertainment to be against everybody else. And the way to get cash was to sell something that he possessed. We know it as the Louisiana Territory.

In other words, he sold half the continent of the United States in order to pay for his adventures in Europe. However, Germanicus has found a connection, it’s very helpful when it comes to the Greenland affair.

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Salvē!

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Trump’s push to acquire Greenland reveals an empire compensating for declining military power with symbolic displays of dominance. Meanwhile, NATO fractures over whether to defend a Danish colony against its own leading member.

Back home, the standoff in Minnesota offers a glimpse of two radicalized factions driving each other toward confrontation. Germanicus asks whether America has become Carthage: a financialized, divided power awaiting its Rome.

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What we have now is the beginning of a long, long drama.

We’ve been through these dramas again and again in the 20th century, and those who use Vietnam, those who used Afghanistan, those who use Iraq, etc. are not wrong enough to be declared out of bounds.

We are in a real fix here, and we are not the same kind of empire in the same kind of splendid situation of omnipotence that we were at the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s.

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We have three fronts tonight: Ukraine, Venezuela, and Nigeria.

Three entirely different challenges, but all at the same time.

The question is, can the empire maintain all three or do something satisfactory for the American people with regard to all three?

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America's constitutional order has transformed into an imperial system remarkably like Rome's. From Clinton and Obama to Donald Trump, presidents rule with an imperial-like power through theatrical connection with the masses rather than republican virtue.

Just as Nero fancied himself a great actor even as the Senate plotted his demise, so too does Trump perform his role while the establishment attempts what can only be described as regicide against the people's chosen emperor.

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The fresh news is that the General Secretary of NATO has made his speech. It is the opposite of amity. Mr. Rutte’s remarks are that when Russia’s finished gobbling up Ukraine, they’re coming for us. They’re coming for us in a fashion that is very consistent with total war.

Meanwhile, the United States pulls away from the continent in a split reminiscent of Constantinople abandoning Rome.

Later, Gaius and Germanicus discuss mass migration and whether Western civilization can assimilate newcomers who may not wish to be assimilated. And Trump’s warm reception at the Army-Navy game reveals the enduring power of a sacred king to embody national identity.

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Gaius and Germanicus survey the wreckage of Washington’s Ukraine narrative. Later, the conversation turns to Trump’s new National Security Strategy with its invocation of the Monroe Doctrine and a new concept called “flexible realism.”

Finally, we reflect on a lesson from the Romans. Is there a third way between mercy and annihilation? Having once been brought to yoke by the Samnites, the Romans ultimately decided their enemies must be reduced to bricks or else would inevitably return to bite them.

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Last night, Gaius and Germanicus examined the sudden emergence of “peace” in the headlines surrounding Ukraine and why that word so often signals defeat rather than resolution.

With Ukrainian forces losing 40,000 soldiers a month and Europe lacking any deployable military capacity, the conversation turns to what leverage the US actually has left, and why the neocons have gone quiet.

Then, Gaius asks Germanicus why America has lost the sense of civic fraternity that still defines French national identity.

We close with a meditation on regicide, and issue a warning that those who entertain such thoughts about the current “sacred king” may not understand the historical forces they’re invoking.

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We’re observing the Thames. It’s unusually grim tonight. The wind is up and the boatmen who cross the Thames routinely are sitting on their hands tonight. It’s too rough out there. You’d have to really be running from someone with a bigger sword than you’ve got to risk the Thames tonight. So we’re a little chilly here.

We’ve asked the Centurions to turn the fire up, and we have a lot to do. We’re not going to be able to accomplish it all tonight—it’s 28 points. You know, we have our limits. However, we’re going to do what we can with 28 point plan and the Ukrainian disruption. The Kremlin is prevailing. The chief is despairing. The emperor in Washington has given his ruling.

It must happen. Europe and our allies are going along saying, well, just here, just there, we’ll go along with it. But there’s more to it. It’s more than just success. There’s the deep irony of how things are done in the 20th century.

And now the 21st.

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